Lee’s Summit finally has Black school board members. Now elect one to leadership role

The Lee’s Summit School Board has a chance to make history again on Thursday by electing its first Black member into a leadership role. They ought to take that chance.

Last year the city elected its first Black school board member, and in 2017 the school district hired its first Black superintendent.

Now parents in the district are calling on the board to vote Megan Marshall, who is Black, in as vice president. Please listen to folks who are tired of all-white leadership in a diverse district and elected Black board members to your board.

Show Lee’s Summit parents and students that the board is serious about its claims to embrace and demand diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the district.

This board in particular needs to show some commitment in that area after all the criticism it received in 2019 over its repeated failure to adopt equity training for themselves, staff and teachers.

Dennis Carpenter, the former superintendent and the first African American to lead the district, threatened to quit after the board voted down equity training twice. The board eventually did agree to pay for the training. Carpenter left later that year, with a $750,000 buyout, amid racist threats from the community and what he called “philosophical differences,” between him and the board.

Yes, the district has an equity plan, unanimously approved by the board two years ago. But despite language in the plan itself, the board has not turned the equity effort into policy. The plan, right off the top, says the board should “Develop an equity policy that aligns with school and district practices to reflect expectations for diversity, inclusion, and equity.” That has not happened.

Marshall, the first African American to sit on the board in 72 years of district history, was elected to the post in June 2020. If she were chosen vice president it wouldn’t be the first time the board selected a member with only one year on the board to a leadership role. In 2018 Jacqueline Clark, who had joined the board in 2017, was elected vice president.

The person serving in that role serves as spokesperson for the board, appoints members to committees and meets regularly with the superintendent.

Clearly, Marshall, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer, is as qualified as any other board member to hold the board’s No. 2 position.

And she welcomes the challenge. ”I would be proud to sit in a leadership role on this board,” Marshall told The Star Editorial Board. “Diversity is important and it benefits everyone. I’ve been elected to the school board by a community that is clearly ready for change. Being the first, it has its challenges, but I’m ready for this. I’m built for this.”

Promises of diversity, equity and inclusion have been major issues in the last two Lee’s Summit school board elections.

Four of the seven members on the board have been vocal supporters of equity, including Marshall and newly elected member Rod Sparks who is African American. Board president Ryan Murdock and member Kathryn Campbell both ran as equity supporters. Murdock was elected in 2018, Campbell last year.

A quarter of the students in the district are non-white, and parents pushing for Marshall to be named vice president said that getting a similar percentage on the board was of primary concern in this last election. Now that that’s been accomplished, “It is important for our children of color to have representation at the highest level, in leadership roles,” said Daphne Means, who has a son in 8th grade in the district..

Means, whose son is bi-racial, said, “We need people who have walked in their shoes and who understand why equity is important and intuitively understand the issues and the unintended biases of some policies. I’m white and even when I try to walk in my childrens’ shoes I struggle. I am never going to experience what they have.”

In a lengthy Facebook post, Timothy Smith, who led campaigns for Marshall and Sparks, said it’s time for some Black leadership in the Lee’s Summit school district

“We have the opportunity to push our community forward by the most important institution in our town, our school district, demonstrating to our children that we all matter; and that collective differences represent a community benefit not a detriment,” the post said.

“It is past time to break through the glass ceiling on the LSR7 board and demand that the current board vote to include one of the qualified African American board members in board leadership. Seventy-two years has come and gone in this school district, and waiting one more year just won’t do.”

Marshall’s election would make a loud, it’s-about-time statement that Lee’s Summit school district is truly ready to act on promises to hire more black and brown teachers and administrators and set policies that assure all students feel included and welcome in their schools.